The Micah Mandate

One week before the Great Crash of October 1929- which precipitated the Great Depression- Irving Fisher of Yale University, perhaps the most distinguished US economist of his time, claimed that the American economy had attained a “permanently high plateau”. Three years later the national income had fallen by more than 50 per cent.… Read the article

The novel coronavirus, now called SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 is the illness it causes) was first identified in Wuhan, China, on late December 2019. Since then it has spread to every continent except Antarctica. The mortality rate appears to be higher than that of the seasonal flu in the northern hemisphere, but much depends on the available healthcare system, as well as a person’s age, and underlying health conditions.… Read the article

My admiration for Bernie Sanders was badly dented last week by his faux pas: calling for population control by the world’s poor as a way of curbing climate change. No doubt the poor need better health education and access to reliable contraceptives, but not because in this way we can control climate change caused by anthropogenic global warming.… Read the article

Support for Trump comes at a high cost for Christian witness. Peter Wehner Last week, Ralph Reed, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s founder and chairman, told the group, “There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J.… Read the article

The question is whether it will be bold enough, united enough, and insightful enough to break the country’s path dependence where governance and politicking are concerned, says Penang Institute’s Ooi Kee Beng. PENANG: The big debate in Malaysia one year after the change in government on May 9, 2018, concerns the unfolding nature of Pakatan Harapan (PH).… Read the article

by M. Shanmugam Critics are entitled to find fault with Pakatan Harapan for not fulfilling its promises. However, it has been a good year for the country as a whole, with the government taking criticism in its stride and continuing to uncover scams left by the previous regime. On the first anniversary of the new government, a can of worms opened up in the Defence Ministry (Mindef).… Read the article

In a letter published in The Malaysian Insight, Ding Jo-Ann, a lawyer who was part of the legal support team on the Institutional Reforms Committee, wrote of the many important accomplishments of the PH government but swiftly moved to focus on her disappointments: ICERD, death penalty, Rome Statute, NSC Act, child marriage, Sedition Act, Prevention of Crime Act and Printing Presses and Publications Act, Securities Offenses (Special Measures) Act (SOSMA), Communications and Multimedia Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Added to that was the matter of Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) and the enactment of Freedom of Information Act. To be honest, I am not at all familiar with the issues surrounding many of the Acts she cited.… Read the article

So I was filling up this questionnaire that The Malaysian Insight sent as part of their assessment of the 1 year anniversary of the PH government. And this question, “Do you think PH is doing a good job managing race and religious relations?” was the hardest to answer and in the end I chose “I don’t know”. The thing is that I think race and religious relations have been going downhill since a long time ago when BN became more and more Malay-Islam centric and allowed the rise of the notion of ketuanan melayu into the the Malaysian vocabulary.… Read the article